Why Tibetans Can't Get a Meeting in Washington

The practice of keeping Tibetan leaders at bay to avoid angering China is an old one here, but that doesn't make it good policy

The Dalai Lama (R) embraces Lobsang Sangay, the elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, after his swearing-in ceremony in the Tsuglakhang temple in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala / Reuters

The new prime minister of Tibet's government in exile is in
Washington this week, and which senior officials of the United States
government will meet with him? None.

The new prime minister, Lobsang Sangay, will have numerous visits to
Capitol Hill to see members of the House and Senate. No one from the
State Department or the White House or NSC staff is, it appears, willing
to see him. This is part of the Obama administration pattern, and Foreign Policy noted
"the perception that the Obama administration has mistreated the
Tibetan government-in-exile -- for example, by downgrading the location
and publicity of Obama's meetings with the Dalai Lama and, in one case
in Feb. 2010, making the Dalai Lama leave through a back door of the
White House and walk past garbage in order to avoid the press."

But this story of refusing to meet with Tibetan officials is a great
deal older than the Obama administration. When I was assistant secretary
of state for human rights in the Reagan Administration, no official of
the "Office of Tibet" in Washington was permitted to enter the State
Department building. When I finally got permission to meet with the
Tibetans (against the strenuous objections of the Department's China
desk), I was told to do it elsewhere--and spoke with them in the lobby of
a hotel.

The reasoning was the same: let's not make the Chinese angry. And it
was faulty then and it is faulty now. There has been a sharp
deterioration of the human rights situation in Tibet this year; ten
monks have set themselves on fire to bring attention to the conditions
there in only the past month. Human Rights Watch reports
"drastic restrictions on Tibetan monasteries" including "brutal
security raids, arbitrary detentions of monks, increased surveillance
within monasteries, and a permanent police presence inside monasteries
to monitor religious activities." Freedom House calls Tibet one of the "worst of the worst" places on Earth.

So the policy of appeasing China has produced only more repression. A
policy of drawing attention to the brutal Chinese repression has a far
better chance of affecting Chinese behavior. That, at least, is the
conclusion one must draw from the recent pattern: as the United States
under the Obama administration has treated the Dalai Lama worse, Chinese
treatment of the Tibetan people has become worse. It is impossible to
prove that if the Dalai Lama and Mr. Sangay were treated far better-if
the Dalai Lama were escorted in and out the front door as was done in
the George W. Bush administration, if Mr. Sangay were received by senior
officials who used the occasion to lambaste Chinese repression--Chinese
abuses would diminish. But it is an experiment well worth trying, one
the Tibetans wish us to try, and one that would associate our country
with the cause of human rights. Those are persuasive arguments.

This article originally appeared at CFR.org, an Atlantic partner site.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Formerly deputy national security adviser on Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush administration, Abrams was also an assistant secretary of state for UN affairs, human rights, and Latin America in the Reagan administration. Abrams blogs at Pressure Points.